“Mac.”
“I’m Rhiannon. This is Jester. Jester, tell Mac you’re sorry.”
The dog cocks his head to one side. His ears flop down lazily and he makes a little crying sound. “Perfect. Good boy. Good Jester.”
“His name’s Jester?”
“I named him after the fool card. In the tarot. Means the same thing, but if I went around this place hollering ‘Fool!,’ half the town would show up.” She grabs Mac’s hand and places it on the dog’s head. “Give him a scratch behind the ears, then a rub under his chin.”
He does as instructed, but cautiously. After two strokes under the chin, the wolf dog lies on the ground, head resting on Mac’s feet.
Rhiannon grins happily. “See? Is that nice? Now just don’t try to walk or he’ll take your leg off—just kidding!”
“Ha, ha. Listen, I already had one dog sink his fangs into my boot.”
“What dog was that?”
“Egbert. Pearl May’s dog.”
She snorts. “That’s not a dog. It’s a rat with a bad perm. We call him Eagle Bait.” A broad wink. “Not in front of Pearl May, of course. Want some coffee? I hope you like chicory coffee, ’cause I got hooked on it years ago and it’s all I drink. I order it up specially from New Orleans.”
Without waiting for an answer, she opens the door. “Come on in.”
The inside of the bus isn’t what he expected. It’s outfitted like a thoroughly modern RV, complete with two sinks, a sizable refrigerator, and a four-burner stove. From outside, he hears the muted hum of a generator.
“Nice setup.”
“Leon was pretty damn handy. My boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. This was his end of the place and that”—she nods toward the back end of the bus—“was mine.”
The far end looks like a gypsy fortune-teller’s tent, draped with an astonishing array of shawls, scarves, rugs, blankets, and beach towels. Which makes sense, because Rhiannon looks every inch the gypsy fortune-teller. Wearing a long, red-and-yellow flowered dress—or nightgown, he can’t be sure—a vest embroidered with more flowers, and a shawl. Her hair is long and wild and wavy and streaked with gray.
“So you’re from Seattle, huh?”
He stops, the cup halfway to his mouth.
“What’s wrong? Oh, I bet you want cream and sugar. I’m sorry, I got sugar, but I don’t keep cream around. I don’t like it and it just goes bad.” She stands on top of a chair to reach a pink china sugar bowl. He drops two cubes in the cup and she plops a spoon in.
“Actually, I was just wondering how you knew I’m from Seattle.”
She waves her hand. “If I was dishonest and shameful, I’d let you think I de-vined that.” She closes her eyes and puts a hand on her forehead. “I’m picking up vibrations from…Washington. Spokane? No. I see a great white city on the water. Seattle. Yes, that’s it. Seattle.” She laughs. “Not that I’m saying I don’t do that once in a while. My powers are always a bit rusty right at the start of the season, but they’re there, I promise you. But this time…well, let’s just say they got a moccasin telegraph around here that never quits. And you’re the only stranger in town at the moment, so we all know you’re from Seattle and you got an El Camino pickup truck sitting over in Ian’s garage that ain’t goin’ nowhere no time soon. So welcome to Beaverton.”
“Well, thanks. I guess.”
She closes her eyes again. “I’m picking up vibrations of ambivalence. Best cure for that is one of Madame Blue’s famous mooseburgers. You want cheese or onions or both?”
“Actually, I haven’t had breakfast yet—”
“Of course not. This is breakfast. It’s great protein, very little fat. It’ll keep your motor runnin’ all day. It’s three-fifty with chips and a soft drink or coffee, fifteen dollars gets you all that plus a reading. Or, if you’d rather, you can sit here and help me make up some patties for this week and your breakfast is free.”
“In that case, I’ll work off my tab.” He looks at a large tub of ground meat thawing in the sink. “This looks like a lot of mooseburgers. You get that many customers out here?”
“You’d be surprised. I get a lot of campers and fishermen. The locals. Tourists’ll be picking up pretty soon. Lot of people stop on the way between Dawson and Whitehorse. I got a pretty good following. And then about two years ago they started including me in the official Yukon Guide Book. I s’pose that means I been here long enough to be an official Yukon tourist attraction—the eccentric Madame Blue and her famous mooseburgers. And then there’s the spiritual adviser thing. Lots of folks around here won’t make a move till they come see me.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Ooh, let’s see. About eight years. Maybe a little more. I don’t exactly remember ’cause we went through here twice. When the bus broke down, my so-called boyfriend headed back to Texas and I decided to stay. Wash your hands over there and I’ll get the music cranked up.”
He’s rolling up his shirt sleeves when a noise blares out of the two tiny speakers on top of her refrigerator. It’s a vocal, he knows, but he can’t understand the words. The singer sounds not only drunk, but also like his adenoids are strung together with barbed wire.
“Hope you like Texas music,” Rhiannon says.
“It doesn’t sound like any country music I’ve heard,” he says.
“That’s because it’s not country. It’s Texas. The Austin sound. This is Jerry Jeff Walker. You’ll love him once you get used to it.”
“I’m sure I will. But maybe you could turn it down a little? The coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.”
It’s close to ten A.M. when he leaves Rhiannon, having narrowly escaped a tarot reading, and walks back up the road toward the house. He’s crossing the front yard when he hears someone shout: “Hey! You want this or not?”
He looks up to see Bernice standing on the front stoop holding a battered copper teakettle. Instead of walking out to meet him, she waits for him to come back to her.
Her expression hasn’t changed since yesterday—he takes it for a combination of boredom, frustration, and general free-floating bad mood—but her straight black hair is tied back with a white ribbon, and she’s wearing an iridescent pink lipstick that looks all wrong against her smooth, caramel-colored skin.
“You must be Bernice.”
“Yeah, too bad about that.” She looks up at him from under a thick fringe of hair that’s too long to be called bangs. Her face is round, nose short, eyes shaped like almonds. She’s not exactly pretty, but there’s something that compels you to look at her—an almost palpable sexual thrum.
“Thanks for the kettle.”
“You can thank Pearl. I had nothing to do with it.”
There doesn’t seem to be much chance of striking up a conversation, so he starts back up the path.
“You better be careful walking around like that.”
He turns. “Like what?”
“With your head up your ass. There’s bears around here, you know. You better pay attention.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
The days, which at first were too long and depressingly free-form, take on a loose and comfortable structure. Every morning at first light he walks the riverbank through white bedstraw, blue spikes of wild delphinium, yellow arnica. Tender new leaves on aspen crowns quiver in the light. The river trundles past, greenish-gray under wisps of fog, and the sandbars are black with birds—ducks, sand-pipers, and plovers. He lets his mind go still.
After a breakfast of bread and cheese and coffee, or sometimes a mooseburger at Madame Blue’s, he works around the house. Olivia Myles, who owns the hardware store, lets him use her radial saw to cut new pickets for the fence. He replaces the broken, rotted ones in one long morning. Afternoons he tends bar at the Beaver Tail with Mitch Cason, a weathered retiree from Saskatchewan. Dinner he keeps simple, usually soup and bread, because he hasn’t quite got the hang of cooking on the woodstove, and afterward he tries to write, rarely successfully, but failing
that, he sits on his porch in the long twilight reading books from Pearl May’s extensive collection.
The following week he sets about painting the fence, proceeding slowly, methodically. Dipping the brush, scraping the excess paint off on the rim of the can, taking pleasure in the contrast of the smooth, bright paint and rough, drab wood. The repetition of the task is oddly soothing, and his thoughts float disjointedly among rock-climbing memories, the book he’s reading about a canoe trip on the Yukon River, and the story of Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence.
At some point he becomes aware of a dark shape in his peripheral vision, and he turns to see Emmett, one shoe untied, shirttail half out of his jeans, clutching a toy red fire truck to his stomach and watching him with an almost hypnotic intensity.
“Hi, Emmett.”
He keeps looking, but doesn’t speak.
“What are you up to this morning?”
In answer, Emmett holds out his toy.
Mac runs a finger over one shiny fender. “Pretty cool truck.”
Emmett sets it down and squats next to it, pushing it through the gravel toward Mac, picking it up, pushing it the other way.
“How old are you, Emmett?”
He considers the question, then holds up his right hand, fingers spread apart, and his left hand, with his index finger up and the rest bunched tightly in his palm.
“I can’t count too well. Tell me how many that is.”
“Six.”
The quick response and the confidence of the soft voice are surprising.
“I go to school,” he adds.
“You like it?”
Emmett nods. He lets himself fall backward into a cross-legged sit, running the truck back and forth as if he were alone. Mac goes back to painting, and the only sounds are the soft rasp of the paintbrush and the truck’s plastic wheels in the gravel.
“Me?” he says suddenly and Mac looks around.
“You what?”
He points at the fence. “Me.” This time it’s not a question.
“Okay. Come over here. Take the brush.”
Emmett dunks it in the paint halfway up the handle and pulls it out from under the rim of the can, splattering paint in a wide arc. Mac picks up a rag.
“Here, let me wipe that—” He reaches for the brush, but Emmett holds it back.
“Nooo.” It’s a drawn-out wail.
Mac takes the brush. “Let me show you something.” He wipes the paint off the handle and gives it back to Emmett. “Stand right here.” He puts his hand on the bony little shoulder and places the child between himself and the fence. Then with his hand over Emmett’s, he dips the brush, scrapes off the excess, and brushes a white trail down a new picket.
The sudden, delighted grin on the boy’s face produces an unfamiliar constriction in Mac’s chest. “Again?”
Emmett nods.
The rhythm of their labor is broken by a voice. “Emmett, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to be out here bothering him.”
Bernice frowns into the morning sun.
“He’s not bothering me.”
She hesitates. “Well, you’re not being paid to baby-sit.” She twists the hem of her T-shirt.
“I’m not baby-sitting. He’s helping me paint.”
“I’m helping,” Emmett says.
Bernice looks dubious. “With that much help, it’ll take you twice as long.”
“I don’t think Pearl cares. Do you?”
At the mention of her grandmother’s name, her face stiffens. “Probably not.” She turns back to the house. “If he gets to be a pest, send him back.”
“’Bye, Mommy.”
She turns back, and in her eyes is the first softness he’s seen there. “’Bye, Emm.” It’s almost a smile.
“So, what do you think?” Chris eyes him curiously, adjusting the bow tie that Pearl insists the bartenders wear for high season.
“Ripped from the pages of Esquire.”
Chris laughs. “Not about the tie, shithead. The Beaver Tail. Beaverton. The decline of western civilization. Whatever.”
“The Beaver Tail is actually pretty similar to Bailey’s, where I worked in Seattle. Maybe a touch more rustic, but a saloon’s a saloon, for the most part. Beaverton—I like it. It’s like this little wrinkle in time. If the Elky had to break down, I’m glad I landed here. The decline of western civilization—inevitable.”
He stuffs the clip-on bow tie into his jacket pocket and smiles back.
“Talkative bastard, aren’t you? Whyn’t you come for dinner sometime? My old lady’s Irish, and she’s a great cook.”
“Sounds good. When?”
“Dunno. Sunday night? It’s my only night off.”
That’s how he finds himself knocking on the blue door of the neat clapboard house three blocks from the Beaver Tail on Sunday night, after his shift ends. Chris answers the door unshaven, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved Indiana Pacers T-shirt. The twin aromas of roasting meat and baking bread float out like an invitation.
“Come on in.”
“I tried to find a decent bottle of red, but…” He holds out a six-pack of Heineken.
“This is great. We’ve got plenty of wine, and Norie and I mostly drink beer anyway.” He shuts the door behind Mac, calling out, “Norie! Company’s here.”
Footsteps, then a woman appears from what he assumes is the kitchen. Her hand is already extended and her grip is strong. “Mac, hi. I’m Nora. Welcome to Beaverton. What can I get you to drink? Ooh, Heiney’s. Thanks.” She takes the six-pack from Chris.
She’s short, but sturdy. Next to her husband she resembles a boulder leaned up against a mountain. Her pretty face is un-made up, freckled and flushed from the heat of cooking. Her dark hair is pulled back into a haphazard arrangement. But it’s her eyes that command attention—a deep, clear green, full of intelligence and humor.
“It’s going to take a wee bit longer cooking, so you lads have a seat in the living room and pop a couple of beers. And don’t tell anything exciting till I get there.” A soft lilt is all that remains of an Irish accent.
“So what brings you up north?” Chris takes a long swallow of beer. “It’s a bit on the early side. Weather’s still pretty iffy. It’s not unheard of to have snow in June. You might’ve—”
“Now I hope you didn’t tell too much. I do hate missing out on things.” Nora flounces back in and flops down on the couch next to Chris. “I want to know what brought you up here so early in the year and what you plan to do and how long you’ll be staying—”
Chris laughs, a rumbling chuckle. “We’re just getting started on all that, my love.”
“I was just passing through on my way to Alaska. I was coming up from Carmacks when I rolled over something hidden in a pothole and it took out my transmission.”
“That’s all fine, well, and good,” she says, flashing a dimple. “You’re on your way to Alaska, but why? And why now? It’s an odd time of the year to be traveling up here, I’m sure. We’re somewhat like the French foreign legion up here, Mac. Everybody has a story. They don’t come to the Yukon so much as come away from elsewhere.”
“And what’s your story?”
She leans her head against Chris’s arm and laughs. “Fair enough. Can I have a sip?” Without waiting for her husband to answer, she takes the bottle from his hand and drinks. “I wanted out of Ireland. It’s a hard place for an independent woman. They give you lots of guff and expect you to take it and swallow it down and say thank you, sir. I came to Toronto for school, earned a degree in finance. Now in Ireland, a woman with a degree in finance has about the same status as a duck who can juggle. She’s a great conversation piece, something you’d love to take round to the pub and show the lads, but as for a job…” She laughs good naturedly. “The only position they like a woman for is on her back, you see. And when they’re done with you there, it’s into the kitchen.”
“What are you doing up here with that degree in finance?”
Her gri
n broadens. “The answer is not a lot. I help some of the shopkeepers with their taxes, keeping their books and such. But here, it’s my choice, not somebody else’s. Now Chris, he’s got a whole different story, being a Yank like yourself, but I’ll let him tell it.” She hands the bottle back to Chris, half empty.
“So you’re American?”
“Yep.” Chris rests his arm along the top of the couch and his fingers stroke his wife’s dark hair absently. “I crossed the border in seventy-one. I was nineteen years old and my number came up. I didn’t want to go to ’Nam and I didn’t want to go to jail, so my best friend and I came to Canada.”
“Where are you from?”
“Indiana.”
“How did you get all the way up here?”
“I didn’t come here at first. I went to Toronto. That’s where I met Nora. We started working our way west and then north.”
“Chris Moody, you’re leaving out all the good parts.” She looks from him to Mac, exasperated. “Why is it that all you men ever want to tell is what and where and when. If you’re really pushed, you might tell how. But you’ll never, ever say why.” She glances down at her watch. “Our food’s gonna be finished cooking. Come help me with the plates, both of you, and we won’t say another word till we’re sitting at the table. Mac, what’ll you drink with dinner?”
In ten minutes they’re eating. Shallow bowls hold some kind of pot roast, tender and succulent, carrots and potatoes and sweet green peas and tiny onions. On the cutting board is a golden loaf of soda bread, fragrant and still warm. It’s disconcerting how the mere sight of a loaf of bread, the smell of it, inundates him with thoughts of Wyn. He eats in silence, stopping only to tell Nora how good it all is.
“It’s moose,” she says. “Best meat in the world, if you know how to cook it.”
“Which you obviously do.”
“I like this one, Chris. He can stay.” She pushes the platter at him, and he helps himself to more carrots and potatoes. “Have some more bread, too.”
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